“On May 18 [1996], in an Ariana Afghan airliner leased by the Sudanese government, Bin Laden landed in Jalalabad [Afghanistan] with three wives, several children, and scores of aides and assistants. He arrived back in Afghanistan just as a new group was consolidating its hold over much of the country. The Taliban, a previously obscure and mysterious army of religious students who championed an absolutely strict interpretation of the Qur’an, had recently arrived themselves as a powerful fighting and ideological force in the country’s long internecine warfare.”
– Terry McDermott, Perfect Soldiers, Page 159